You probably heard all this buzz regarding the Google Chrome 80 release, where third-party cookies will be blocked and the end of the digital marketing era. But will it affect your performance-based business? Let’s have a detailed look.
Third-party cookies are cookies created by domains other than the one you are visiting directly, hence the name third-party. They are used for cross-site tracking, retargeting and ad-serving.
Google Chrome will start blocking the third-party cookies in Chrome version 80, which will be released on February 4th, 2020. Cookie blocking has been around for a while, Safari started to block third-party cookies in autumn 2018, with iOS 12 and macOS Mojave release. Also, Safari tries to recognize trackers’ domains and block the pixels from that domains. Firefox started to block third-party cookies back in September 2019 when they enabled Enhanced Tracking Protection for Firefox by default.
How will that affect offer tracking on my platform?
There’s nothing to worry about. Scaleo uses first-party cookies, so the cookie-based restrictions won’t affect current tracking in 99% of situations.
So are there some restrictions still?
Unfortunately, yes. But good news it is connected with one browser only, Safari. With the release of Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.2 (ITP 2.2), Safari deletes first-party cookies from recognized tracking domains after 24 hours. It still sounds not critical, right? At least for campaigns where conversion should happen within 24 hours after the initial click.
What would you recommend?
Cookies-based tracking is still a good method for affiliate marketing campaign tracking. It is easy to set up and should suit the majority of situations.
However, if you are looking for 100% accuracy and reliability, we strongly recommend using Postback Tracking. It is also known as server-side tracking and is the most reliable and accurate way to track ad campaigns nowadays.
Postback Tracking has lots of benefits:
- no time restrictions,
- cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-domain compatibility
- doesn’t depends on user actions such as clear the browser data or use private browser tabs
Here is the detailed guide on how to set up Postback Tracking in Scaleo: Postback Tracking
* This refers to web tracking only, not app installs or in-app events tracking, because of different technologies used.
Last Updated on January 19, 2024
